Historical Trends Should Give Rebuilding Dems a Lift

History gives them about a 90 percent chance of retaking the House.

Given how bad midterm elections tend to be for the party holding the White House, it would be understandable if members of Congress and other candidates were to wish their team had lost in the previous presidential election. While Republican senators can feel pretty good about their majority,House Republicans should be steeling themselves for a loss next year. It’s not just about historical trends, but it is also the situation specific to 2026.

Exceptions do occur, but they tend to happen more often in the Senate, which has a much smaller and less representative sample of seats up every two years. The president’s party typically losesSenate seats in two out of three elections. In the House, however, which is a more sensitive barometer of the public mood, it’s more like nine out of 10.

The last midterm election saw one of those exceptions, when Democrats actually scored a net gain of a seat in the Senate and Republicans underperformed in the House, gaining only nine seats when it’s often at least double that in midterms. But while 2022 was something of an exception, it was not a random outcome. Republican primary voters in about two dozen races around the country nominated “exotic and highly problematic” candidates, my more tasteful term for weird and terribly flawed candidates in a handful of critical U.S. Senate, gubernatorial, attorney-general, and secretary-of-state contests around the country, as well as about 10 congressional races. These nutty nominees in about 30 decisive contests made all of the difference in the world, preventing the GOP from scoring the kind of victory one might expect when the opposition party had a sitting president with just a 40 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll.

This would seem to be an important lesson for Democrats next year: If they nominate candidates who can win over pure independent and swing voters, they will have a good chance of having a good election. Conversely, if in purple states and districts they nominate candidates who mirror the party’s base, the outcome might be a bit different.

For Democrats, 2025 and 2026 need to be rebuilding years. Two governorships are up for reelection this year, followed by a whopping 36 in 2026. At least 16 of those offices will be open due to term limits. Each party has one term-limited governorship up this year: Democrats in Kentucky, and Republicans in Virginia. In 2026, Democrats will try to hold onto open gubernatorial posts in six states: California, Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, and New Mexico; Republicans will be striving to hang onto Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

One second-order effect of having so many open governorships is that it attracts House members and increasingly, senators, who may be willing to abandon their current jobs in a stalemated Washington in exchange for a shot at really running things as a governor back home. The Senate part is relatively new. In the 1990s, California’s Pete Wilson started a trend of senators opting for gubernatorial runs instead of the other way around. So watch for how many open House and evenSenate races pop up out of frustration with how things in Washington are, or aren’t, going.

The first Gallup poll of Trump Part Deux was released last week, indicating that 47 percent ofAmericans approved the job he was doing so far, 2 points higher than in his first poll in 2017. Forty-eight percent disapproved, 3 points more than two years ago (there are fewer undecideds this year).Not surprisingly, 91 percent of Republicans approved (5 percent disapproved), independents splital most evenly, 46-48, and just 6 percent of Democrats approved against 92 percent who disapproved.In his first term, Trump’s approval rating had a very narrow trading range—never exceeding 49percent nor dropping below 34 percent, a much narrower spread than for any previous president. It’s a decent bet he’ll stay roughly in that range this term as well.

It will be tempting for Trump critics to say that following the actions he took after Gallup was in the field from Jan. 21-27, his approval rating will likely drop. That could happen, but we should remind ourselves of how seemingly impervious his numbers have been to news. Basically one-third of voters will love him no matter what, and roughly half, maybe a hair under, will hate him no matter what.

What is clear is that Trump does best when he has a foil, a devil to beat on. He did well against HillaryClinton in 2016 and inferentially against then-President Biden in 2024, but in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election, not as well.

Clearly, Trump is trying out a number of possible targets, domestic and foreign. We’ll see who he settles on and who puts up with it or strikes back.

This article was originally published for the National Journal on Feb. 3, 2025.